The Pirates of the Levant (31 page)

We were a pathetic sight, lying, along with the galley- slaves, among the broken benches or in the gangway, in the corridors or on the fighting platforms, exhausted, broken or badly wounded. We were smeared with soot from the gunpowder, arid our hair, clothes and weapons were caked with blood. To give us some cheer, Captain Urdemalas ordered what little remained of the arrack to be shared out, while to eat — the oven had been destroyed and the cook was dead — there was dried shark's meat, a little oil and some hard-tack. The same was done on the other galley, and men even came and went between the two ships, talking over the events of the day and enquiring about such and such a comrade, mourning those who had died and celebrating the living. This did cheer people a little, and some even began to think that the Turks would go away or that we could repel further attacks — there were sure to be more the following day, if the Turks didn't try to board us during the night. But we had seen that they, too, were in a bad way, and that gave us hope, for in a desperate plight, the doomed man clings to any illusion.

The fact is that our gallant defence had emboldened the most hopeful among us, and some even thought of a funny trick to play on the Turks. Two live chickens were kept in cages in the storeroom; their meat and eggs — although they did not lay much while on board — were used to prepare stews and broths for the sick. The jokers made a raft with a little sail on it, and after tying the two creatures onto it, they took advantage of the gentle breeze to send the creatures off towards the enemy galleys, amid much laughter and shouts of defiance. We all laughed, too, especially when the Turks, although stung by the insult, picked up the birds and took them on board. This raised our spirits, which was something we certainly needed, and some men even began to sing, loud enough that our enemies could hear, the old shanty that the sailors used when they hauled the yard. In the end, the men formed a large chorus of voices, broken but not beaten, as they stood facing the Turks:

Heave ho, the pagans, Heave ho, the saracens, Heave ho, Turks and Moors, They all bow down to Abram's sons.

Soon we were all leaning over the sides, shouting at the top of our voices and telling the dogs to come closer, that we'd be delighted to have a couple more boarding parties to finish off before we went to bed, and that if they weren't man enough to do that, then they should go back to Constantinople to fetch their brothers and their fathers (if they knew them), and their whorish mothers and sisters, on whom, of course, we would bestow some very special treatment. Even the wounded, swathed in bloody bandages, raised themselves up on their elbows and joined us, howling out all the rage and fear we carried within us, and finding comfort in that boasting — so much so that not even Don Agustin Pimentel or the captains made any attempt to stop us. On the contrary, they urged us on and even joined in, aware that, condemned to death as we were, we needed something that would encourage us to put a still higher price on our heads. If the Turks wanted to hang
them
on their yard-arms too, they would first have to come and cut them off.

In a further act of defiance, our commanders ordered the lanterns on the poop rail to be lit, so that the Turks would know where to find us. We reinforced the ropes keeping the two galleys together and let go the anchors — we were in shallow water — so that no unforeseen wind would carry us towards the enemy. The men were also allowed to rest, albeit with their weapons at the ready and taking turns on watch, just in case the enemy should decide to attack in the dark. But the night passed calmly and without wind, the sky clearing slightly to reveal a few stars.

I was relieved from my watch just as I was about to fall asleep through sheer exhaustion. Feeling my way past the men lying on the deck — both galleys were filled with a chorus of moans worthy of a troupe of French beggars — I reached the embrasure where, in a kind of bastion made of torn blankets and remnants of rigging and sailcloth, Captain Alatriste, the Moor Gurriato and Sebastian Copons had taken shelter. The last was snoring loudly, as if he were putting his heart and soul into it. They, like me, had been lucky enough to escape unscathed from that terrible day, apart from the Moor Gurriato, who had suffered a slight scimitar wound to one side, which Captain Alatriste had bathed with wine and then sewn up — an old soldier's skill — with a thick needle and thread, leaving one stitch loose so that any bad humours could drain out.

I lay down without saying a word, too tired even to open my mouth, but I couldn't sleep, my body ached so. That encounter with the hairy Turk and with all the others who came after him had left me stiff in every limb. I was thinking — and I knew I was not the only one — about what the next day would bring. I couldn't imagine myself at the oars of a Turkish galley or in a prison on the shores of the Black Sea, and so, since victory on our part seemed improbable, my future looked set to be distinctly brief. I wondered what my head would look like hung from a yard-arm, and what Angelica de Alquezar would think if, possessed of some mysterious clairvoyant powers, she were to see it. You might imagine that such thoughts would have plunged me into despair, and there was something of that, but the horse does not think the same thoughts as its rider. Viewed from the warmth of a good fire and a well-stocked table, things look very different than when viewed from a trench or from the fragile deck of a galley, where placing life and liberty at risk is one's daily bread. We were certainly desperate, but we were like young bulls bred only to fight, so that lack of hope seemed natural. As Spaniards, our familiarity with death allowed us to stand and wait patiently for it; we had no alternative. Unlike other nations, we judged each other according to how we bore ourselves in the face of danger. That is why our character was such a curious blend of cruelty, honour and reputation. As Jorge Manrique said, centuries of fighting

Islam had made us free men, proud and certain of our rights and privileges.

They're earned by monks and pious nuns

Through prayers and supplications;

By valorous knights through waging wars

'gainst Spain's old enemies ~ the Moors.

And that is why, accustomed as we were to the vicissitudes of fortune, with Christ's name on our lips and our soul on a knife-edge, we accepted our fate on that sad day — if indeed it was to be our final day — as we had on so many similar days. We did so with the resignation of the peasant watching the hail flatten his crops, of the fisherman finding his nets empty, of the mother certain that her child will be born dead or will be carried off by a fever before it has even left the cradle. Only the pampered and the comfortable and the cowardly, who live with their backs turned to the realities of life, rebel against the inevitable price that sooner or later we all have to pay.

There was the sound of a harquebus shot and we all sat up, uneasy. Even the wounded stopped moaning. Then there was silence, and we relaxed.

'False alarm,' Copons muttered.

'Fate,' said the Moor Gurriato stoically.

I lay down again next to the Captain, with nothing to cover me but my steel breastplate and my tattered doublet. The night dew was already soaking us and the planks we were lying on. I felt cold and moved closer to the Captain in search of warmth. After the rigours of the day, he smelled, as ever, of leather and metal and sweat. I knew he would not mistake my shivering for fear. I sensed that he was awake, although he did not stir for a long time. Then, very carefully, he removed the scrap of torn sail from his own body and placed it over me. I was no longer a child, as I had been in Flanders, and that gesture did not so much warm my body as my heart.

At dawn, we shared more wine and hard-tack, and while we were eating that sparse breakfast, the order came to unchain any of the slaves who were prepared to fight. We looked at each other; we knew we must be in very bad straits if we had to resort to such extremes. Turks, Moors and natives of enemy countries, such as the English and the Dutch, were excluded, but for the others this offered a chance, if they fought well and survived, of having their sentence or part of it redeemed on the recommendation of our General. It was not a bad opportunity for the slaves from Spain and from other Catholic nations, for if they stayed at the oars, they were doomed to go down with the ship if it sank — no one would bother to unchain them in the event of shipwreck — or else remain as slaves, but rowing for the Turks, which they could avoid only if they renounced their religion. (In Spain, a slave baptised a Christian always remained a slave.) Some did choose that route to freedom, especially younger men, for reasons that are easy to understand. This, however, happened less often than you might think, for even among galley-slaves, religion is a serious, deep-rooted matter, and despite the misery of captivity, most Spaniards taken by the Berbers or the Turks remained true to the one faith, so that the words of Cervantes — a captive who never renounced his faith — would not be applied to them:

Perhaps they are simply cruelly bored

By the harshness of a captive's life,

And so, in the jaws of that bitter vice,

they embrace Mohammed's faith as lord: A way that's easy, a way that's broad

And so it was that we unshackled as many Spanish, Italian and Portuguese slaves as offered their services, and they were duly issued with spears and half-pikes. The two galleys, which had lost a third of their soldiers and sailors, thus found themselves with sixty or seventy new recruits who were determined to die fighting rather than be drowned or cut to pieces in the fury of battle. Among them was a rower at the stern called Joaquin Ronquillo, a gipsy and jewel of Malaga's ruffianry, as well as an acquaintance of ours; he was a very dangerous man and much feared on board, so much so that for some time we had kept our savings under his bench, where they were safer than in the house of a Genoese banker.

This Ronquillo fellow — shaven head, black doublet edged in red, a treacherous gleam in his eye — joined our group, bringing with him a small band of like-minded men, who looked about as honest as he did. Shortly afterwards, we were given orders by Ensign Labajos, who appointed Captain Alatriste as our commander — he and Labajos were the only officers of any rank left among the soldiers on the
Mulata —
to form a fighting squad to provide reinforcements wherever the Turks proved most of a threat, especially the area around the skiff and the ladders on either side of the stern, which would give the enemy access to the corridors leading to the fighting platforms. We were all urged to defend the galley plank by plank; Father Nistal blessed us again from the deck of the
Caridad Negra-,
and we and Machin de Gorostiola's Basques — to whom we were still bound for good or ill — wished each other luck.

Just as we took up our positions, with the sun barely risen in a clear sky over the dead-calm sea, the seven Turkish galleys, with shouts and the noise of cymbals, flutes and trumpets, began to row towards us.

Ensign Labajos had died in the midst of the battle, overwhelmed by Turks, as he repelled yet another boarding party at the stern of the
Mulata
; Captain Urdemalas had also been wounded. Diego Alatriste was leaning against the awning supports, washing blood from his face and hands with sea water, which made the scratches and surface wounds sting. His whole body hurt. He was watching the men throw overboard any dead bodies that cluttered the deck, which was a chaos of broken planks and shattered rigging. The fighting had lasted four hours, and by the time the Turks had withdrawn to recover and to disentangle and replace the broken oars on their galleys, both masts on the
Mulata
had been brought down, the yards and torn sails lying either in the water or on top of the
Caridad Negra
, whose trinquet mast had been lost and its mainmast cut in two. Both galleys were still tied together and afloat, although the losses on both ships had been appalling. On the
Mulata
the galleymaster and his assistant were dead, and the German gunner had been killed when a cannon he was firing exploded, killing him and his helpers. As for Captain Urdemalas, Alatriste had just left him, or what remained of him, lying face down on the floor of his cabin at the stern, where the barber and the pilot were using their fingers to scoop out gobbets of blood from the huge gash — from kidney to kidney — inflicted by a Turkish scimitar.

'You're in command,' Urdemalas had managed to say between groans, cursing the man who had wounded him.

In command.
There was a grim irony to those words, thought Alatriste as he surveyed the bloody, splintered mess that had once been the
Mulata.
All the storage compartments, including the one set aside for gunpowder, were full of wounded men, body piled on body, begging for a sip of water or something to cover their wounds. But neither water nor bandages were to be had. Above, in what had been the rowing chamber, and which was now a confusion of blood and debris, lay galley-slaves alive and dead, the survivors moaning amid what remained of their benches and the shattered fragments of mast, rigging and oars. And in the corridors and on the fighting platforms, beneath a searing sun that made the steel of breastplates and weapons burn, the remaining soldiers, sailors and freed slaves were tending their wounds or those of their comrades, handing round whetstones to repair the battered blades of swords and knives, and gathering together what they could find of gunpowder and bullets for the few muskets and harquebuses that still worked.